


something so precious about this

by unorgaynized



Series: a dream of spring [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Canon-Compliant Misogyny, F/F, canon-compliant prejudice, past alys karstark/sigorn of thenn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:48:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23158801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unorgaynized/pseuds/unorgaynized
Summary: As the Long Night ends, Alys and Meera discuss the merits of being remembered, and make memories of their own.
Relationships: Alys Karstark/Meera Reed
Series: a dream of spring [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1664740
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11
Collections: ASOIAF Rarepair Week





	something so precious about this

“Did you ever want to be remembered?” Alys’s voice was hoarse against Meera’s sharpening of her spear. She would go mad if it was only her talking against the cold and her Sun’s babbles. No matter that they had lived through the worst of the Long Night, no matter that King Rickon sat his winter throne in perpetual safety, an iron figurehead of his family. No matter that the Others were pushed back beyond the Wall, into another realm by Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen.

She had not been there. Queen Arya and Queen Sansa had taken the women and children to the Neck, into the crannogs of the Marshes, building up reserves and safety. Queen Arya and Lady Brienne taught the noble girls how to fight, and women of the free folk who had stayed behind taught the smallfolk. They had prepared, and it had been for nothing, saved by the sacrifice of the two on dragonback. Alys was almost disappointed that she had not warred against the dead, against her family’s ancestral enemy. Karstark and Stark had still been one when the thirteenth Lord Commander had followed the corpse queen to the side of the Others, and her Stark blood still flowed strong.

Meera glanced at her, simply gazing through her, her green eyes empty. There might as well have been naught in the room separating Meera and the wall, for all that Meera’s gaze captured Alys or her daughter. “I never saw the need.”

“To be remembered, truly remembered?” Alys bounced Sun on her leg, the girl still not old enough to be named Jorra. “To be more than some notice in lineages, forgotten when your grandchildren are grown? Do you want to mean something to others?”

Sigorn had told her that children of the free folk were not truly named until their second nameday. He had not told her what would happen if both parents died before a child was two, or what a child might remember her parents by if she did not even have a name from them. Alys doubted she was in much more danger of death than she would have been in any other winter. She could pass in the cold, to hunger, to honorless men desperate for shelter. That had always been a winter risk.

Still, she had a wed a man that ought to have been a memory. She was wed by a hero, who had bound her to a man of the free folk to solidify a peace and provide a statement. Her man had fallen in battle, had unknowingly given her a daughter, and did not live to see the triumph of the living. It was a dishonor to his memory to think of Meera, to have Meera in her dreams and behind her eyes as her hand sought between her legs at night. Still, it was winter, and winter had different rules.

Meera’s sharpening grew harder, near enough that Alys might worry if there would be sparks. “Remembered,” she said at last as if the word itself needed to be scraped from her tongue, fouled by the meaning. “What good is it to be remembered, I ask? Why is it not simply enough to be forgotten? All the best people are.”

“I don’t want to be remembered on my own,” Alys swallowed. “I have no need. I have a child, I have my legacy, little as it may be. But my brothers--” her throat was tight. Harry, six years older and sweeping her up on his shoulders when she was little more than a babe. Torr, soft and quiet, mooning over the boys and laughing with her. Edd, barely a man grown and desperate to prove himself. She was Torr’s age now, older than Edd, had outgrown her closest brothers. “I want them to be remembered for more than my father’s betrayal.”

“Jojen was my younger brother,” Meera’s voice was quiet. “I was to take care of him. I promised our parents.”

Sun let out a little cry, yanking at Alys’s braid. “You did what you could, to the best of your ability.” Alys didn’t know the whole song of the tales beyond the Wall, though she’d heard enough rumors that it chilled her blood. She hoped to never send her girl out so far and deep into the cold that what was left of her would come back half-frozen in all that mattered.

Meera gave the slightest twist of a smile, an expression more from habit than for any feeling. Alys knew better than to read any further into it. “You asked about being remembered. Jojen won’t be, after Bran passes.”

“He’ll live longer, won’t he?” From the little Alys knew of the green magic that ensnared Brandon Stark’s predecessor, of the magic that ate him up and reduced him to withered roots, it had kept him in a half sort of life. He’d been some creature of the Old Gods or of their enemies, and the boy Meera had dragged into safety was the same.

“You asked about being remembered.” Meera stood, pacing the small room, and Alys’s eyes caught at her slim hips, at her legs. “This is what my brother told me. Do you know who will be remembered among us? Not you, not me. Not the Hidden Wolf, queen regent of winter, even as she patrons songs. Not the Free Wolf, king of summer, though it will be his line that sits in Winterfell. Nor the Faceless Wolf, queen regent or spring, loved as she is. They’ll remember the Three-Eyed Wolf, wingèd prince of autumn, prince of the green and the wolfswood. They’ll remember the White Wolf, and the dragon queen, and the golden queen of lies.”

“Is that a prophecy?” The hair prickled on the back of Alys’s neck, brought on by some chill in the air. “Is that-- what do you call it, greensight?”

“No.” Meera sounded defeated, slumping back into her chair. “I never died and flew. Jojen told me before his second death.”

“You could spin me whatever tales you want.” The words burst out. “If you want. I’ll believe you. I won’t need a seer’s word, not from you.”

“You say that now.” Meera sounded half-broken, defeated. “You won’t always listen. You’ll have more to care for.” Her eyes fell on the babe in Alys’s lap. _Better things_ , Alys read. 

“No.” Alys shook her head. “I won’t. What use have I for not minding what you say? I know not half your worth, and I know you to be of importance. I know you think before you speak, and each word is weighed by what you have done. I know you _matter_.” 

They were both Northern women, once Northern girls. Meera was heir to the Neck, Alys the only daughter of Karlhold. Meera ought to be respected as the future lady of a powerful vassal house, not derided as a little swamp-strewn crannogwoman, clinging too tightly to primitive beliefs. She escaped the Bastard of Bolton, took Brandon Stark beyond the Wall, and returned him back. Still, prejudice ran deep in the North, where no woman sat a winter throne in her own name, and crannogmen were scorned. Whatever accolades Lady Meera ought to have earned would be given as quarter measures for her blood and sex. Alys was regarded as little other than a cunt to claim Karlhold by her own blood, distant as it was. 

“I have always known that,” Meera replied, lips pulled into the shape of a smile. “It’s out of the Neck you dry-dwellers forget that.”

“I won’t.” Her daughter burst into a storm of tears, and Alys held back curses. “She must-- it’s time for her to sleep. I’m sorry, I’ll be back.” She stood up, tearing her eyes off the other woman. She didn’t want to see the expression on Meera’s face, be it relief or disappointment. Which would hurt more, after all? She couldn’t think more on it, as she was a mother, and that had to come before the feeling Meera stirred in her.

* * *

She hadn’t been able to return to the room, as one of Sigorn’s kinfolk had waylaid her to play with the babe. Sefa had been one of the women to help Alys integrate the most with the Thenns. She spoke even less of the Common Tongue than Sigorn, but she was the better teacher. 

Alys liked Sefa, truly she did. Sefa had a mind for remembering paths, for all that she could not see. Sefa was quick and clever, rarely cold, and far too quick to laugh when someone made a mistake. Honest, in a way that Alys never could have been. Sefa had been the one to approve of Sun for a milk-name until the babe could be named Jorra in Sigorn’s absence, saw to it that Sun was learning the Thenn’s Old Tongue in the right type of speech.

Sefa however, liked to interrogate Alys as she played with Sun. She liked to have Alys learn the Old Tongue at the same time as the babe, and so short amounts of time with Sefa did not truly exist. By the time Sun was put to sleep in Sefa’s room, Alys’s mind was tumbled into simplicity, small phrases of childish clumsiness. 

Mayhaps it was Alys’s mental exhaustion. Mayhaps it was the guilt at promising to return to Meera and she never did. It was important, Alys felt, vitally important that she at least go to Meera’s room to apologize. This was Meera’s castle, and she had disrespected its lady. Alys was enough of a kneeler that she could see it as an insult, even though Sigorn wouldn’t have thought twice of it. His father had been near a god to his people, and what Styr took for insults had been larger than those that the kneelers like Alys’s father would.

“It’s late,” Meera said as she opened the door. “Are you well?” Her eyes were as alert as ever, darting around the hallway before settling. Alys wanted to drown in that deep green, plunge herself into the marshes of Meera’s eyes and be kept there forever. It was said that a man might fall into the bogs and not be found until he was dragged up a thousand years years later, shriveled and soft. Alys had fallen, and she did not think that she could resurface until all had changed. 

“Alys?”

Her name had never sounded so sweet as it did on Meera’s lips. A short twisted-off name, cut-off and made hard for the winters. She used to imagine she was named like the queen, had a long and beautiful name, though now she could not find the old wish. Perhaps if it stayed longer on Meera’s tongue it might, though there was nothing so lovely as her name at this moment. Nothing so perfect, save for the woman in front of her. “I want you,” she said, the words jumbling up in her mouth and mind. 

They had been so hard, so accidental an admittance that she could not fathom for a moment which tongue she had spoken in. 

Meera blinked once, twice. “Is that Thenn? I’m more familiar with the tongue of the Haunted Forest. It’s similar if you meant to say--”

“No.” That was in the Common Tongue, she knew. She did not have to force it through her mouth, twist it ‘round her brains and force it through. “I think of you. I dream of you. I want you, Meera.”

She waited, anxious for the other woman’s reaction. She had always known how to flirt and tease yet-- her childish clumsiness with Robb Stark, her camaraderie with Jon Snow. She had cared for Sigorn easily, who had been no worse to tolerate than any other kind man might have been. 

“What took you so long?” Meera asked instead, stepping closer and rising up on her toes to kiss her. She grasped her arms, pulling Alys inside her room. 

Outside and unknown, the ice thawed over the marshes. 

**Author's Note:**

> asoiafrarepairs's A Dream of Spring Event. Day 1: Thaw | False Spring


End file.
